Gnomeo and Juliet - Movie Review

This contemporary re-imagining of the Shakespearean tragedy ranks high on the adorability scale and sky high in the celebrity voiceover appearance scale – Patrick Stewart, Emily Blunt, Jason Statham, Dolly Parton, Hulk Hogan, James McEvoy, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters, Matt Lucas, Ozzy Osbourne for heaven’s sake… that’s some Shakespeare. One of the most performed plays in literary history is noisily refreshed in a new milieu – a suburban English garden.

The vividly hued world of the gnomes is important symbolically as well as artistically. The primary colors of the gnomes’ loyalties, red and blue, the Bloods and Crips, the Capulets and Montagues, of the back yard set, and the million shades of green and blossoms colours in the lush vegetation of the garden, against the blue sky make this an eye pleasing delight.

The candy colored inhabitants of adjoining backyards have been embroiled in an ages old feud, in the traditional, social, political feud straight out of The Bard’s original tale. Sweetly naïve Gnomeo and Juliet however, learn this time around.

Young Turk Tybalt (Statham) is just as uncontrollably violent as he was 400 years ago, except now he gets to use really loud machines. It was genius casting Statham who recreates his signature action hero scowl and bite as he revs up another manly machine.

Gnomeo and Juliet, the plaster star crossed lovers are in the traditional secret passion pickle.

They’ve fallen in love despite the war between their families, their gnome gnations, and their efforts to bring this love to flower without being discovered are futile. And yet they carry on, driven by youthful passion and recklessness. But once they are discovered, all kinds of gnome-y hell break loose.

The war spills outside the walls of the gardens and into the mean streets of suburbia where Gnomeo and a truck meet by accident. He is presumed dead as shards of pottery strew the road and Juliet and his mother are beyond comfort.

This is one of several sequences reminding us that the rush to violence and destruction in children’s pop culture is irrevocable. Big noise, big blow up, big boom. A couple of gnomes order a Terrafirminator online (?) to wage war on the enemy next door, but naturally, the machine is too much for a group of garden ornaments to handle and chaos reigns.

Destruction trumps all. The glorious gardens are leveled by the Terrafirminator, for a time, at least. Does no one trust children to enjoy a film that doesn’t self-destruct with eye popping violence? Is this what we’ve come to? It’s hard to reconcile love and war but the gnome world, while it looks pretty harmless, is a hotbed of heightened emotion and action.

The world’s a dangerous place, maybe most especially in the suburbs.

Elton John and partner David Furnish produced the film, and John provides most of the soundtrack with a few references to the Beatles. The tunes are familiar, rousing, sentimental and perfect in this milieu.

Gnomeo and Juliet will entertain kids and their parents and that’s a win-win situation and thankfully no one dies.

35mm 3D animation

Written by Kelly Asbury

Directed by Kelly Asbury, Mark Burton, William Shakespeare, et al

Source: M&C



















Gnomeo and Juliet

Carancho - Movie Review

Pablo Trapero teams up with “Lion’s Den” team screenwriters Alejandro Fadel, Martín Mauregui and Santiago Mitre in producing the action thriller “Carancho.” The film is an enthralling inside look at urban Argentina with an unbridled sense of indie artisanship. The cast and crew are young award winners and the film is nervous--filled with constantly moving shaky-cam shots that take the viewer directly to the center of the action.

When that action is in the back of an ambulance or the front seat of a car the viewer in right on top of the blood soaked victim, crashing in the nether land of a rolling, bouncing closet. The brutal potholes in the road smash the audience as they open the wounds of the lacerated victim reeling from his unjust, random plight.

Take notice, this film is not for the faint of heart. The central theme is automobile death in modern day Argentina. The country claims the world’s highest road death rate. Relative to cars owned this is five times as high as the USA.

Traffic fatalities are the leading cause of death for Argentineans under the age of 35, with many of the deaths claiming pedestrians crossing the street or walking on the side of the road. Estimates indicate about half of the country’s drivers run one red light a day, including drivers of buses full of passengers.

Trapero’s fast-moving film takes these statistics directly to the audience. Sosa (a riveting performance by “The Secret in Their Eyes” Ricardo Darin) makes his living as an ambulance-chasing lawyer.

His dishonesty moves the film into the self-inflicted plight of many Argentineans, a country with four decades of political unrest, corruption and financial crisis. Sosa has been disbarred but still must make a living in a country that, during his lifetime, has displayed world-class political-brutality and economic breakdown.

Reflecting the hard-hitting nature of the story, the screenplay contains elements of explicit injected drug use and the slow walking death that results. A few scenes from “Requiem for a Dream” come to mind--this film is almost as brutal and hard hitting as Arronofsky’s early masterpiece.

In executing the difficult vehicle interior shots and the chaos and impersonality of urban emergency medical care, the director and screenwriters seemed to be reliving the nightmare of “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu.”

The scene is one hundred percent set in the streets and the queasy-cam gets a lot queasier with the bodies bouncing off the windshields, through the windshields and out of the smashed open doors of over-turning vehicles. Sosa is tortured with solid body blows dealt out repeatedly in the wet, dark gutters and in the front seats of his cheap, faded, broken down automobiles that surely have been resurrected from Mexican junkyards.

Sosa meets emergency medical doctor Luján (Martina Guzman—“Lions’ Den”) early in the film. Their attraction is as immediate as it is unbelievable. This attraction is dangled in front of the audience in a well-paced and effective manner, giving rise to the noir-ish voyeuristic love scenes seen through eyes of that shaky-cam.

Although the two appear to be exact opposites in the beginning, as the story unfolds their paths steer together onto parallel roads to destruction.

Darín appears to have been coached with Paul Newman’s performance as the down on his luck lawyer in “The Verdict” and he is almost as good. The ambulance scenes move the abstract, sci-fi images of “Lazarescu” into real life without losing a bit of the pure, dark threat of death. Darin is the key to this transition.

He combines the shifty-eyed toughness of the man on the skids looking for the right angle with the barely visible foreboding of the condemned.

As in many indie films, the use of the hand-held camera gets a bit tedious and there was not quite enough story to sustain the entire running time of the movie, as a result it flagged a bit in the last 20 minutes.

Perhaps this was accented by the certainty of the outcome. In spite of these small detractions, the film still represents a substantial success for the filmmakers. Both of the leads performed with strength and commitment.

Directed by: Pablo Trapero

Written by: Alejandro Fadel, Martín Mauregui, Santiago Mitre and Pablo Trapero

Starring: Ricardo Darín and Martina Gusman

Runtime: 107 minutes

Source: M&C
















Carancho

The Eagle – Movie Review

Director Kevin MacDonald is best known for his scintillating “Last King of Scotland” and his Best Documentary Oscar winner “One Day in September.” He puts on a completely different hat in this near sequel to Neil Marshall’s previously released “Centurion.” Both films are set in the second century AD and revolve around Rome’s attempted domination of what is now Scotland. In case you haven’t heard, Rome was less than completely successful. In fact, England a thousand years later was also unsuccessful (see “Braveheart’).

In “The Eagle,” the action takes place in 140 AD Britain. The south (England, more or less) is controlled by Rome and the North is controlled by those nasty Caledonians, made up in part of the tribes of the Picts.

They were solidly entrenched in their homeland and supremely well adapted to the extreme cold, wet and wind of the northlands. The Romans, on the other hand, have superior armaments and more sophisticated fighting tactics. The stage is set for some good old fashioned, head lopping, skull bashing tribal warfare, and the viewer is not disappointed.

The two lead characters are Marcus and Esca, played by Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell. Jeremy Brock’s screenplay places Marcus as the son of the dishonored Roman general who led the Ninth Legion into the Caledonian wilderness 20 years earlier.

The Ninth never returned. With them, they took the cast bronze Eagle, the symbol of the pride of all Rome, which disappeared with the Ninth. Marcus is dedicated to restoring the honor of the Ninth Legion and his father and he is determined to find the Eagle and restore it to its rightful place in Rome.

Early in the film, the slave Esca is thrown into a pit for a fight to the death with a trained gladiator. He shows defiance in the face of certain death, although Marcus, driven by some inexplicable connection, saves the slave’s life at the last minute. A bond is created between the two and they sally forth into the savage north to confront the ferocious Seal tribe.

From there, the film follows an arc similar to “Centurion.” The two soldier/pilgrims are hopelessly outnumbered and have to use their wits as well as their swords to carve out a trail to the lost Eagle.

The film maintains a spectacular drop of beautiful Scottish scenery as the two men wander across the rugged hills and mountains of the Highlands. In fact, they cover a lot of land in the kind of clothing that would lead to the immediate death by hypothermia of real people. But, what the heck, this is Hollywood.

Also, as in Hollywood, they are able to beat off several dozen stronger fighters because, well, they are the heroes. The result is one walloping good time without too much energy wasted on the whys or wherefores.

The soundtrack, costumes and sets are fantastic. The filmmakers for this flick pulled out all the stops. The plot is almost completely predictable from start to finish. The accents of the actors are non-existent. That is, they didn’t attempt to mimic the accent that might have existed in 2nd century Britain.

While this might be just plain laziness, or lack of funding, it provides an interesting otherworldly sense to the whole affair. Marcus and Esca converse like the well educated American and Britain they are and the story goes on.

As long as the film focuses on the sword fights and great tactical duels everything is fine. It is when the two characters have to exchange some meaningful lines that things get ugly. As the action winds down and the heroes are able to make their peace with one another the screenplay dissolves into pure sappiness.

Tatum might as well have asked Bell to join his fraternity or come to the Gator Bowl with him, for all the clout the final words have.

Donald Southerland shows up as a grizzled old man who imparts words of wisdom. More importantly, he imparts his name to the credits of this flick and constitutes the main reason many will pay the price of admission.

The violence is fairly realistic but there is no blood spurting or actual heads flying around. So it’s OK to bring the kids. Good fun for all and no more violent than the average video game.

Directed by: Kevin Macdonald

Written by: Jeremy Brock (screenplay) and Rosemary Sutcliff (novel)

Starring: Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell and Donald Sutherland

Runtime: 114 minutes

Source: M&C



















The eagle movie

The Way Back – Movie Review

Master director Peter Weir teams up with co-screenwriter Keith Clarke to bring Slavomir Rawicz’ riveting novel of Siberian survival to the screen. Only a few films in history match this testimony to the endurance, faith and camaraderie to be found in the human soul. When all else fails and faith in the human race is flagging, this film brings hope.

Americans love escape flicks. As a sub-genre of the caper flick, they couple the maverick denial of the impossible with the triumph of the good guy. In fact, even if the escapee is not a good guy we still love the films.

Recent examples of great bad guy getaways include Dillinger in “Public Enemies” and the fabled Mesrine. Old favorites include Steve McQueen’s 1963 “Great Escape” and the culmination of all traditional escape films, his “Papillion,” ten years later. In recent years, Tim Robbin’s “Shawshank Redemption” may well top the list.

However, when it comes to survival coupled with escape, there have been few films ever made that match this one. Captain Bligh’s open boat voyage after the mutiny on the bounty is widely regarded as the most amazing feat of survival but there has not been a film made of it. Would we want one? After all, it was just one day after the next of waiting, waiting, waiting.

For Peter Weir fans, in making “Way Back” the champ is completely up to the level of intensity and integrity that he has demonstrated time and again. However, just as “Picnic at Hanging Rock” was a bit minimalist for some, this walk from Siberia to India is, after all, mostly a walk.

There is walking in snow, in fields, in deserts and across mountains, but not a lot more action than that. The brutality of the opening scenes seems over-acted, as if the director himself sensed that the film needed some more action, somewhere.

The kind of intelligent people who will watch this film do not need to be smacked across the face to know that life in the gulags was tough, or that the Stalinist regime was psycho. It is a good thing when the film gets down to the business of survival, but it does get old after a couple of hours.

Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris and Colin Farrell put out excellent performances. Harris is at the top of his game - over 60 and getting better every film. There is little to back them up in the way of action, fancy camera work or costumes. They are dressed in rags and walking on snow and that is about it.

This demands extreme personal exhibition of the mental trauma of impending death. These three men actually look like every day will be their last. In spite of that, they go on, struggling to survive long past the point where they know either direction or motivation. This is theater.

They survive, of course, but we all knew that was the case before we saw the film. There are powerful lessons in bonding and mankind’s humanity, and inhumanity, to man. We see the best and worst in the human race.

However, many Americans will miss the Yankee ingenuity of “Rescue Dawn” or even the clownish “Rambo” series. The escapees do not have any tricks---they just walk, and bump into water now and then.

The photography is without compare, it is absolutely spectacular. However, it takes more than a travelogue to make a great film. Oscar nominated Saoirse Ronan’s (“The Lovely Bones” and “Atonement”) supporting performance is also spectacular, but the other work is just “much above average” - not knock your socks off.

Ronan deserves an Oscar nomination but Ed Harris’ power is hidden deep behind his beard. Another great supporting performance by Romanian indie star Dragos Bucur (“The Other Irene,” “Police, Adjective” and “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”).

This is one of the top twenty films of the year but it will lose audience share due to the deliberate pacing and its length of 133 minutes.

Directed by: Peter Weir

Written by: Keith R. Clarke and Peter Weir (screenplay) and Slavomir Rawicz (novel)

Starring: Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris and Colin Farrell

Runtime: 133 minutes

Source: M&C



















The Way Back poster

Pop ladies rule at Grammy Awards

Country trio Lady Antebellm and pop star Lady Gaga were among the winners at the most prestigious ceremony in the music calendar, the Grammy Awards. Lady Antebellum won five prizes, including song of the year and record of the year for their hit Need You Now. Lady Gaga, who was carried down the Los Angeles event's red carpet in a giant egg, won three awards including best pop vocal album for The Fame Monster. Rapper Jay-Z and soul star John Legend also picked up three awards apiece.

Jay-Z's haul included two trophies for Empire State of Mind, his duet with Alicia Keys, while Legend was rewarded for his collaboration with hip-hop group The Roots. Eminem led the field going into the ceremony, with 10 nominations. But the star picked up just two awards - best rap album for Recovery and best rap solo performance for Not Afraid.

He had been tipped to win best album, but that award went to impassioned Canadian rockers Arcade Fire for their third studio album The Suburbs.

Another shock came in the best new artist category, where singer and bassist Esperanza Spalding beat pop heart-throb Justin Bieber and hip-hop newcomer Drake to become the first jazz artist to win that award. British breakthrough artists Florence and the Machine and Mumford and Sons also lost out in that category.

But UK artists fared better elsewhere. Veteran guitarist Jeff Beck, who had seven nominations, was the leading British nominee going into the ceremony. He scooped both best pop instrumental performance and best rock instrumental performance.

Sir Paul McCartney won best solo rock vocal performance for his live album Good Evening New York City, while a Beatles box set won best historical album.

Other British winners included synth-pop duo La Roux, who won best electronic/dance album, Iron Maiden, for best metal performance, and Sade, for best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocals.

Stadium rock band Muse picked up best rock album for The Resistance. The trio, who performed at the ceremony, saw off competition from veterans Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Tom Petty and Jeff Beck. But Young did triumph over Muse in the best rock song category. His track Angry World, from his album Le Noise, was also up against tunes by Mumford & Sons, Kings of Leon and the Black Keys.

This is my first Grammy for music, and it's appreciated greatly," the 65-year-old Canadian legend said.

In other categories, Rihanna's Only Girl in the World was named best dance recording and US rock duo The Black Keys picked up best alternative album for their sixth release, Brothers, beating Vampire Weekend and Arcade Fire.

The ceremony at the Staples Center featured a string of flamboyant, star-studded performances and collaborations.

The show began with a tribute to soul queen Aretha Franklin, who is recovering from an operation, performed by Christina Aguilera, Florence and the Machine's Florence Welch, Jennifer Hudson, Martina McBride and Yolanda Adams. Lady Gaga then emerged from her egg-shaped cocoon to take to the stage to perform her new single Born This Way.

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow joined a feather-clad Cee Lo Green Jim Henson's puppets to give a colourful performance of the hit single Forget You.

And Rolling Stones frontman Sir Mick Jagger earned a standing ovation for his debut Grammy performance, delivering a rendition of Everybody Needs Somebody To Love in tribute to Solomon Burke, who died last year.

Grammy winners - main categories

Record of the year - Lady Antebellum, Need You Now

Song of the year - Lady Antebellum, Need You Now

Album of the year - Arcade Fire, The Suburbs

Best new artist - Esperanza Spalding

Best female pop vocal performance - Lady Gaga, Bad Romance

Best male pop vocal performance - Bruno Mars, Just the Way You Are

Best pop vocal album - Lady Gaga, The Fame Monster

Source: BBC


















Lady gaga

Movie Review - black swan

Black Swan is a 2010 American psychological thriller film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, and Mila Kunis. Its plot revolves around a production of Swan Lake by a prestigious New York City ballet company. Nina (Portman) is a ballerina in a New York City ballet company whose life, like all those in her profession, is completely consumed with dance. She lives with her obsessive former ballerina mother Erica (Hershey) who exerts a suffocating control over her. When artistic director Thomas Leroy (Cassel) decides to replace prima ballerina Beth MacIntyre (Ryder) for the opening production of their new season, Swan Lake, Nina is his first choice. But Nina has competition: a new dancer, Lily (Kunis), who impresses Leroy as well. Swan Lake requires a dancer who can play both the White Swan with innocence and grace, and the Black Swan, who represents guile and sensuality. Nina fits the White Swan role perfectly but Lily is the personification of the Black Swan. As the two young dancers expand their rivalry into a twisted friendship, Nina begins to get more in touch with her dark side - a recklessness that threatens to destroy her.



















black swan

The Fighter - Movie Review

The Fighter is a 2010 biographical sports film directed by David O. Russell, and starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, and Amy Adams. The film centers on the life of professional boxer "Irish" Micky Ward (Wahlberg) and his older half-brother Dicky Eklund (Bale).Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is a 30-year-old Irish-American welterweight boxer from a working class family in Lowell, Massachusetts. Managed by his mother, Alice Ward (Melissa Leo), and trained by his older half-brother, Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), Micky has not had a particularly successful career: He's become a "stepping stone" for other boxers to defeat on their way up. Complicating matters, Dicky, a former boxer whose peak of success was knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard, is addicted to crack cocaine and is unreliable. Dicky was known as "The Pride of Lowell", a fact he and his mother relive and boast about. Now an HBO documentary crew is filming Dicky's day-to-day affairs, which he is convinced will bring about his boxing comeback.

Alice appears to favor Dicky over Micky, and chooses to ignore her older son's drug problem. On the night of a scheduled undercard fight in Atlantic City on an HBO televised fight, Micky's opponent is barred from the match due to illness; a substitute is found who is nearly 20 pounds heavier than Micky. Despite Micky's reservations, his mother and brother agree to the terms so that they can all get the purse. Micky is soundly defeated by the much heavier fighter in an obvious mismatch. Frustrated with his career and embarrassed by his defeat, Micky tries to retreat from the world and forms a relationship with Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams), a former college athlete who dropped out and became a bartender.



















The Fighter

The Kids Are All Right - Movie Review

The Kids Are All Right is a 2010 American comedy-drama film directed by Lisa Cholodenko and written by Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg. Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a married lesbian couple living in California. They have each given birth to a child using the same anonymous sperm donor. Nic, an obstetrician, is the primary breadwinner and the stricter parent, while Jules is more laid back and lives as a housewife who is starting up a landscape design business. While the couple is happy, and the family functioning well, it is also clear that their relationship has begun to go stale.

The younger child Laser (Josh Hutcherson) is eager to find his biological father, but has to be 18 to find the identity of the sperm donor. He begs his 18-year-old sister Joni (Mia Wasikowska) to contact the sperm bank in order to meet their biological father, Paul (Mark Ruffalo). The first meeting goes well. Joni is impressed by his bohemian lifestyle and Paul is enthusiastic about being in their lives. Joni swears Laser to secrecy as she does not want to upset their mothers. However, Jules and Nic find out and invite Paul over to dinner. The atmosphere is awkward but amiable. When Jules reveals that she has a landscape business, Paul asks her to landscape his back garden. Jules agrees, although Nic does not like the idea.



















The Kids Are All Right

The King's Speech - Movie Review

The King's Speech is a 2010 British historical drama film directed by Tom Hooper and written by David Seidler.The film opens with The Prince Albert, Duke of York (played by Colin Firth), the second son of King George V, speaking at the close of the 1925 Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium, with his wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) by his side. His stammering speech visibly unsettles the thousands of listeners in the audience. The prince tries several unsuccessful treatments and gives up, until the Duchess persuades him to see Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an Australian speech therapist in London. In their first session, Logue requests that they address each other by their Christian names, a breach of royal etiquette. He convinces Albert to read Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, while listening to the overture from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro on headphones. Logue records Albert's reading, but convinced that he has stammered throughout, Albert leaves in a huff. Logue offers him the recording as a keepsake.



















The King's Speech

Winter's Bone - Movie Review

Winter's Bone is a 2010 drama film, an adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel of the same name. The film was written and directed by Debra Granik, and stars Jennifer Lawrence. It explores the interrelated themes of close and distant family ties, the power and speed of gossip, patriarchy, self-sufficiency, and rural poverty in the Ozarks as they are impacted by the pervasive underworld of illegal methamphetamine labs. The film has won a number of awards, including the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic Film at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It received four 2011 Academy Award nominations in the categories of Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor.

















Winter's Bone

Toy Story 3 - Movie Review

Toy Story 3 is a 2010 American 3D computer-animated film. It is the third film in the Toy Story series. It was produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Lee Unkrich. Toy Story 3 was also the first film to be released theatrically with 7.1 surround sound. Andy is now 17 years old and packing for college, and his toys who have not been played with in years feel forgotten and abandoned.

Andy decides to take Woody with him to college and intends to store the other toys in the attic. By accident, Andy's mom throws the other toys away, making them think they are no longer wanted; they escape and decide to climb in a box to be donated to the Sunnyside Daycare. Woody, the only toy who saw what really happened, is forced to follow the others and tries to explain they were thrown out by mistake, but they refuse to listen.

Andy's toys are welcomed by the numerous toys at Sunnyside, and given a tour of the seemingly perfect play-setting by Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear (a.k.a. Lotso), Big Baby and Ken, whom Barbie falls for. All of the toys are quickly enamored with their new home, leaving steadfast Woody alone to attempt to return to Andy. However, Woody is picked up outside the school by the imaginative toddler Bonnie. She takes him home and plays with him along with her other toys, who are well treated, happy, and readily welcome Woody. Woody is elated until he hears about Lotso from Chuckles the sad clown.















Toy Story 3